Please note: we have been online over ten years, and we want The Trek BBS to continue as a free site. But if you block our ads we are at risk.Please consider unblocking ads for this site - every ad you view counts and helps us pay for the bandwidth that you are using. Thank you for your understanding.

Welcome! The Trek BBS is the number one place to chat about Star Trek with like-minded fans. Please login to see our full range of forums as well as the ability to send and receive private messages, track your favourite topics and of course join in the discussions.

If you are a new visitor, join us for free. If you are an existing member please login below. Note: for members who joined under our old messageboard system, please login with your display name not your login name.

I think that what you were seeing on Ardana was basically a economic class system. The upper crust, the rich and the ruling leadership live in the cloud city. The miners were a part of the society's lower class, or possible the lower middle class.

There were others in their society, artists, artisans, police, servants, farmers. Someone built that city, I doubt it was the wealthy. Someone invented the anti-gravity that placed it in the sky.

Captain's log, Stardate 3842.4. The interplanetary conference will consider the petition of the Coridan planets to be admitted to the Federation. The Coridan system has been claimed by some of the races now aboard our ship as delegates, races who have strong personal reasons for keeping Coridan out of the Federation.

SAREK: Under Federation law, Coridan can be protected and its wealth administered for the benefit of its people. Coridan has nearly unlimited wealth of dilithium crystals, but it is under-populated and unprotected. This invites illegal mining operations.

Essentially, the Coridan planets had asked for protection, not exploitatation.

And in the Tellun star system the Federation had offered mediation between Elas and Troyius. Apparently, unlike the Klingons, the Federation didn't even have a clue that there were deposits of dilithium crystals in that star system.

Bob

__________________
"The first duty of every Starfleet officer is to the truth" Jean-Luc Picard
"We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them." Albert Einstein

^^ Obviously some Federation members like the Tellarites did their own illegal mining but other than that, can you please provide an example?

Here is another example ("Mirror, Mirror"), that the rule book did not go out of the window:

THARN: We accept that your Federation is benevolent at present, but the future is always in question. Our dilithium crystals represent awesome power. Wrongful use of that power, even to the extent of the taking of one life, would violate our history of total peace. To prevent that, we would die, Captain. As a race, if necessary.
KIRK: I admire your ethics and hope to prove ours.
THARN: The council will meditate further, but do not be hopeful of any change. Captain, you do have the might to force the crystals from us, of course.
KIRK: But we won't. Consider that.

Bob

__________________
"The first duty of every Starfleet officer is to the truth" Jean-Luc Picard
"We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them." Albert Einstein

Regardless how the PD would deal with non-humanoid sentient beings, it was obvious that they didn't know that they were dealing with a lifeform.

T'Girl wrote:

Mirror Mirror, were the Halkons prewarp? Anyway no PD.

You could probably add the indigenous societies from "A Private Little War" and "The Omega Glory".

This just illustrates why I usually don't like this retroactive continuity BS. Suddenly "prewarp" status has become the benchmark by which to retroactively judge whether our TOS protagonists did violate the PD or not.

I hope I'm not the only one who considers that the TOS producers had something other than this "prewarp" stuff in mind. Spock's concerns in "Errand of Mercy" suggested that the UFP considered the impact on a medieval society as considerate.

Other than that, contact between Starfleet personnel and "prewarp" indigenous cultures wasn't prohibited by the TOS era PD per se.
The major issue was not to reveal superior technology to a less advanced culture. This became clear in "A Piece of the Action" (transtater field equipment forgotten by McCoy), "A Private Little War" ("use of our phasers is expressly forbidden") and "The Omega Glory" ("Interesting that the villagers know about phasers.").

Kirk's log entry in "The Omega Glory" follows Spock's observation (there's not much else they learned in the short amount of time):
"A growing belief that Captain Tracey has been interfering with the evolution of life on this planet. It seems impossible. A star captain's most solemn oath is that he will give his life, even his entire crew, rather than violate the Prime Directive."

Put simply, the TOS PD wasn't about "prewarp" but about concealing phaser or superior technology in general.

Bob

__________________
"The first duty of every Starfleet officer is to the truth" Jean-Luc Picard
"We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them." Albert Einstein

Canonically, the criteria are vague. We know that Federation Members have to have a unified planetary government ("Attached") and must ban caste-based discrimination ("Accession"). Given the various references to a society's "maturity," I suspect it is safe to infer that Federation Member candidates must have achieved the kinds of social progress outlined as Earth's accomplishments after First Contact in ST:FC: Abolition of war and poverty, improved health care, etc.

Personally, if I'm writing the Articles of the Federation, my criteria would be:

- Presence of a unified government encompassing at least one planetary surface if a planet-based society
- Presence of a unified government encompassing the culture's entire territory if the society is not primarily planet-based (a society of astroid colonies, for instance)
- Minimum and maximum population levels, to ensure relative equality of representation on the Federation Council
- Government must be a constitutional liberal democracy (meaning, it must function according to law, it must guarantee certain inalienable rights, and it must obtain a democratic mandate which regularly expires and must be renewed)
- Universal adult suffrage
- Maintenance of a welfare state ensuring minimum wealth for all citizens and residents
- Maximum limit to the amount of wealth any citizen or resident may accumulate to prevent the evolution of an oligarchy
- Presence of either an advanced social democratic economy (capitalism with strong socialist programs to curb excess inequality) or a democratic market socialist economy (socialism with capitalist traits to curb excesses), both designed to minimize economic oppression
- Adoption of a strong program of ecological sustainability in the functioning of the economy and of technology, or serious attempts thereof
- Absence of social structures built around or perpetuating privilege, racism, bigotry, sexism, heterosexism, classism, religious oppression, or other forms of oppression
- Renunciation of militarism, jingoism, or other forms of war-mongering
- History of social policies of serious reparations and restitution if such oppressions have existed in the past
- Overall a relatively egalitarian social order
- Presence of a strong mechanism to enforce and protect civil rights and liberties
- Presence of a vibrant civil society
- Absence of any form of slavery or forced labor
- Presumption of innocence in criminal cases
- Absence of capital punishment
- Willingness to abide by the Guarantees of the Federation Constitution

Of course, there's the question of just what the Guarantees of the Federation Constitution actually consist of.

It seems clear that a culture doesn't actually have to use, or even have, warp technology. If it's aware of the existence of same, that appears to be enough.

For example: the Ba'ku in Insurrection. They obviously had no starships or warp drive in active use, but they knew about those things anyway. And hidden away somewhere they still did have stores of technology (which they used to try and fix Data).

Who knows, the same thing might have applied to the Capellans. They clearly knew enough to receive alien visitors and negotiate with them. So it could be that in some cavern somewhere, they had some kind of technological base...

__________________
Sweet dreams are made of cheese
Who am I to diss a brie?
I cheddar the world and the feta cheese
Everybody's looking for Stilton

Warp capability was a retcon concept and frankly I'm wondering if that was a TOS requirement when I actually look at Gideon or Ardana.

* snip *

OTOH I could imagine both planets having invented satellite technology or the like enabling them to detect warp drive travel of others, which IMHO would equally justify a first contact encounter.

This is how I tend think about it.

Particularly since it seems like if the galaxy were as crowded as Star Trek's seems to be, any civilization reaching an early-to-mid 21st century level of development should be capable of detection of all kinds of transmissions showing life on other planets.

It seems clear that a culture doesn't actually have to use, or even have, warp technology. If it's aware of the existence of same, that appears to be enough.

Obtaining warp drive technology might force the issue when it comes to first contact, determining if a culture has discovered subspace radio might be harder to figure out, especially if they listening, but not talking.

If there is a interstellar version of the internet, just having the subspace radio would be ... interesting.

Robert Comsol wrote:

PD probably suspended because of Organian Peace Treaty. Unless you feel the Klingons are entitled to do the cultural damage of the indigenous society while the UFP is not.

Adherance to the PD should not depend on "everyone else" also doing so. The PD only applies to Starfleet (maybe the entire Federation too), the fact that people outside of Starfleet have their own rules, or none at all, should not effect Starfleet's observance.

Regardless how the PD would deal with non-humanoid sentient beings, it was obvious that they didn't know that they were dealing with a lifeform.

I was referring to after it was discovered that the Horta species were "people." The end of the episode contained no mention of the miners being require to evacuate the planet. The planet ample supply of pretty rocks superceded the PD's non-interferance stipulation.

This just illustrates why I usually don't like this retroactive continuity BS.

My personal take is that the PD isn't simplistic, there are conditions when it applies and when there are exceptions. Also I see it changing periodically, being reinterpeted by Starfleet Command, the Federation Council treating it as a political football. Starship Captains might get weekly updates.

Sci wrote:

Canonically, the criteria are vague. We know that Federation Members have to have a unified planetary government ("Attached") and must ban caste-based discrimination ("Accession").

I wonder if those were always entry requirements, or were both introduced sometime in the mid 24th century ... and how long would they last?

As the Federation grew, and new and different cultures became a part of the mix, the Federation surely changed. It's internal policies altering over time.

PD probably suspended because of Organian Peace Treaty. Unless you feel the Klingons are entitled to do the cultural damage of the indigenous society while the UFP is not.

Adherance to the PD should not depend on "everyone else" also doing so. The PD only applies to Starfleet (maybe the entire Federation too), the fact that people outside of Starfleet have their own rules, or none at all, should not effect Starfleet's observance.

I agree that just because somebody else is doing something, shouldn't be the excuse for oneself doing the same thing.

OTOH, it's of little use for the indigenous culture you want to protect with the PD, if the Klingons are messing it up and usually much worse than the Federation would do.

But I agree that in "Friday's Child" the Federation posture is somewhat "pre-emptive" and therefore quite debatable. IMHO, they should have left the indigenous population alone, until they could have verified Klingon presence.

I'd like to recommend the Prime Directive article at Memory Alpha which I feel is very well written and researched and discusses the various cases in detail.

And it makes it pretty clear that "prewarp" or not was never an issue for TOS (If they felt by TNG's 24th Century that "prewarp" capability should be a first contact factor, possibly adopted from the Vulcans, it definitely was not an issue in the TOS era).

Bob

__________________
"The first duty of every Starfleet officer is to the truth" Jean-Luc Picard
"We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them." Albert Einstein

Of course entry requirements might change over time so caste based socities might have been permitted in the 23rd century ie.e Ardana. But following the events the Enterprise encountered on their, the UFP might have reviewed their policy on it and by the 24th Cenury caste based socities weren't permitted.

__________________
On the continent of wild endeavour in the mountains of solace and solitude there stood the citadel of the time lords, the oldest and most mighty race in the universe looking down on the galaxies below sworn never to interfere only to watch.